Friendship

Have you ever thought about how wonderful it is to have a friend? Ever feel lonely, without anyone to talk to? Well i have. At least for million times i felt how nice it was to have friends and at least for 99 times i felt down because i had no one to tell and no one just to be with and hang out with.

Friendship, one of the strongest pillars that held me up when i was down, picked me up when i fell and made me smile when i frowned. It is true that much of what i know today that forms me has been largely from an influence of friends. Its not what i learnt in school or university. Its not what the TV said. It is how my friends acted and how i chose which to like and not like, follow or not follow and stay neutral or side the value.

Having said all that, however, this is post is not about how much influence friends are in our lives or how we should choose our friends and let the best people influence our lives positively.

This post is about how much you actually treasure your friends.

I actually struggled whether i should share this with you but i finally come to a conclusion that honest and complete sharing is when we all grow the most especially on the part of the one who share. So i will.

During Primary school, Primary 6, i met with a friend named Bezelal. We were actually in the fourth ranking class. (I dropped from EM1 to EM2 because of my poor chinese and also becuase i didn't study much during primary school.) I was the only new student in the class and that means that all of the pupils had already spent a year or more as a class. I remembered dreading school and hating myself for not doing well in my subjects.

The first day of school, at the assembly i just found the class, 6 Grace, and sat down. During those school days, we had to sit beside someone to form a line in pairs in the school hall. I was not that early and neither was i late but i soon found an empty area beside this guy. It was, i guess purposely left empty becuase in front and behind him were girls and i figured that at that age we were still unmatured about sitting next to our sexual counterparts lol.

Anyways, after sitting down and taking out a book to read i started noticing how funny this guy looked. His face was just like any other human being but he just had this really thick eye brows and funny skin color. He noticed how i started to scrutinize his face while faking to read the book which was now at my nose level and he turned and said hi.

We started talking and we sat together in class. Went to recess and lunch together. We took the MRT together. We went to the arcade together. I bought "red alert" from him which was later found out by my mom and i had to return to him. He was the funniest guy ever known to me and he was just so easy to talk to. For those of you who knows me, if you can imagine, if you think i'm funny and crappy, he is worst. But he knows how to frame everything very well; so that noone who hears it gets offended or angry.

I guess one of those things that made it so easy was that when you talked to him, he doesn't judge. He just replies what you say in such a brillant and most of the times funny way that you knew that he was listening and not trying to tell you what to do.

I miss that alot.

We became best friends and everyone knew about it, like whenever someone wants to find me he'll go look for Bezelal, anyone who wants to know where bez is he'll find me. I guess one of the reasons we became so close is the way we opened up to each other. There was nothing that we didn't talk about. Teachers, and the tonnes of homework they gave us, other boys who were bullies and great soccer players, video games, pretty girls and those girls who were so very mean to us :P. We weren't the most attractive boys around the school, however there was something about us that made girls come to talk to us. Seriously, they did. n_n

I remembered there was a time when he came over to my place to play tennis. We didn't know how to so we ended up playing badminton in the tennis court. And something happened. His face turned awfully pale and sickly. I quickly brought him into the shade and gave him water. After he regained his composure i found out that actually he was not as healthy as most of us.

He was born with a hole in his heart. This means that whenever he over exerts himself, dirty bloody would flow and mix with the oxygenated blood and it might cause a heart attack. That was why he was most of the time excused from physical exercise. We decided that that was enough exercise for a day and went back home to play video games instead.

I really enjoyed my last year in primary school. Well, except for the complains from my teachers and my parents naggging me to study. Come to think of it, i really don't remember studying for my PSLE exams lol. I really enjoyed the friendship and companionship of Bezelal.

But the good times were short, PSLE came and then the posting to secondary school. Somehow we did not contact each other after we went into different schools. So i called him once and we talked for a bit and sort of wanted to meet up.

I remember clearly, when i was in Sec1 on the last day of exams, before the art paper that i took, i arrived in school with all the sketches and pieces of drawings in a big file while i was walking up the stairs towards the hall when a friend approached me. As usual we said our hi's and then he said something that i couldn't register at that point when he said it because i was concentrated on how i was to draw later. However, i didn't know how i replied but i replied "no i didn't". He asked if i had read the papers..

I was dumbfounded at the next few words he told me. He told me that Bezelal had died, of a heart attack just the day before and that it was reported in the papers. I just didn't know what to say, deep inside something in me has just been broken, something had left me. I remembered asking God why he took bezelal before we met again and i remembered getting no reply and no one to talk to. Friends comforted me but i guess they didn't really understand or felt what i felt.

A few of us met and went to his funeral. It was the first time i went to a funeral and it was the most painful one as well. As the pastor talked about him i just couldn't control myself. I just cried like there was no tomorrow. I was so hurt.

A few of us go together and gave some money to her mother and when she saw me she immediately asked if i was jian ming (my chinese name). As my eyes teared up at her words i realized how much he told her about me, to the extent that she could regconise me when she saw me; we never met before that. We hugged and cried.

My friends, please, no matter what, treasure whoever is around you now.